A Small Light in Another Window

From her bedroom, Reema could see twelve apartment windows in the building across the lane. Most nights she paid no attention to them. During a lonely winter, however, she began noticing which lights came on first.

One window had a desk lamp that stayed on late. Another flickered blue with television. On the fourth floor, someone watered plants after midnight. Reema began inventing harmless stories about the strangers: the late worker, the movie lover, the person who forgot plants until bedtime.

The windows did not make her less alone, but they challenged one idea loneliness repeated: that everyone else was somewhere together.

One evening she saw the desk-lamp window go dark earlier than usual. The next night it was dark again. She caught herself wondering if the person was okay. The thought surprised her. She had been so focused on being unseen that she had forgotten she still had the capacity to notice others.

The following weekend Reema joined a small neighborhood book exchange she had ignored for months. She did not make instant friends. She spoke to two people, borrowed a novel, and went home. But when she looked across the lane that night, the windows felt different. They were not symbols of other people’s fuller lives. They were reminders that every lit square contained a life she could not fully see.

Loneliness narrows the world into comparisons. We see the visible parts of other lives and the invisible parts of our own. Sometimes relief begins by remembering that everyone has rooms, silences, worries, routines, and nights we know nothing about.